


Native Language, Mother's Tongue

by piades



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: (Previously titled "Damian Language Angst".), Angst, Coping, Fanon, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Loss of Language, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 22:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades/pseuds/piades
Summary: Damian used to be the lethal heir of the Demon's Head and his Grandfather's submissive pawn.Now he is Damian Wayne, Robin, son of Batman and Bruce Wayne.If only Grayson let him stay this way





	Native Language, Mother's Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Come Back, Old Yeller, Come Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528458) by [naasad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naasad/pseuds/naasad). 



> Warnings:  
> This story deals with loss of language, and someone attempts to destroy a Quran.
> 
> Timeline? what timeline? continuity? what continuity? I don't care, have some angst, guys.
> 
> Pay attention to what the font face, if you can. It changes. This story may be hard to follow if you can't see the font.
> 
> I welcome criticism on this story.
> 
> This story was inspired by Damian in [Come Back, Old Yeller, Come Back by naasad](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528458) and what I've observed of my mother's struggles with being isolated from her first language at a young age.

“I’m home!”

It sounds like Grayson’s voice—

But Grayson shouldn’t know that Damian is here, in his apartment. He wouldn’t put it past him to work it out, and under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be a cause for concern, but right now the sound of it hits him hard, too hard.

Every instinct screams at him that this is some agent of Grandfather’s — or even Mother’s.

The door closes with a heavy, familiar bang.

In weeks past, the sound of the door has been a comfort. It’s been a source of happiness and excitement. It’s got its own unique sound as it hits the wooden frame of Grayson’s door.

Now he can only wonder how they mimicked Grayson’s voice so well.

Keys jangle and feet thump against the floor — and Damian’s hands dip for weapons. His hand goes to his waist, where he keeps his sword, but feels only cotton. It’s not there. His hands slide to his knives.

They, too, are AWOL.

Of course. Damian lives apart from his blades now. He was foolish enough to think that he was safe. 

What he does have is a kitchen full of weapons.

The person that sounds like Richard Grayson steps into the dining room, and Damian leans over the kitchen counter to snag a pair of knives from the knife-block.

Their eyes meet across the room.

The smile falls off Grayson’s face.

“Damian?” He prods. “You okay?”

And—it’s Dick’s voice this time, his real voice coming out of his own mouth shaping around English words. English, not Arabic.

This is no agent of Grandfather’s, or Mother’s. This is his idiotic brother.

Damian throws a knife at him for putting him through the panic. Grayson grimaces as he dodges. “Damian, what was that?!”

Damian smirks. The panic in his mind has cooled. “You must remain alert at all times, Grayson. What was that, anyway?”

“Arabic!”

That deserves a snort. Damian gives it one. “That was _hardly_ Arabic. That was incompetence.”

Grayson shrugs and pulls the knife from the wall. A flitter of a smile crosses his face. His eyebrows rise and he turns to face Damian — blithe. Confident. “Yeah, I only know about five words. I’ll get better!”

“That is unnecessary.” Damian pulls his head up, and sets his shoulders back.

“I want to be able to speak to you, Lil’D.”

Damian tuts. Grayson comes around behind him and slides the knife back in the block, and smiles like an idiot.

Grayson will do as he pleases. There’s no stopping him.

Damian watches the shifting of Grayson’s weight as he turns back towards him and strikes at just the right moment. Grayson falls — but he isn’t off balance, not really, and Damian knows he’s failed almost instantly. Grayson gains control of their movement.

Damian’s pinned the moment he hits the floor.

Grayson lets go and ruffles his hair. A strangled snarl leaves Damian’s mouth.

“Don’t do that again, Grayson! I’ll _end you!_ ”

Grayson laughs.

***

The last time his family had spoken Arabic spoken around him starts with his own words, which he’d heard through his own skull, the words vibrating through his head to the rhythm of his vocal chords.

“Mum.”

He shouldn’t have said that word. It put weakness on his mother’s face. If anyone saw the weakness he put there… it didn’t bear thinking. It was selfish of him.

_Why did she ever let the vulnerability show?_

Even her words held her vulnerability. 

“Be brave, child.”

His mother was being weak. It was her fault that he broke. For a moment, he _broke_. He eyes watered.

“Please.”

She squeezed his arm. “Be brave, son.”

Bravery didn’t come into the feelings that he felt as he thought about leaving her. Bravery implied fear, and he was never afraid, not ever.

She let go of his arm and said — “English.”

It was time for the fear to leave. It was time to meet Father.

“Yes Mother.”

***

He didn’t need to be brave — not facing Grayson, not facing his father, and definitely not facing Timothy Drake. He didn’t feel any of the fear required to make bravery necessary. He’d done perfectly fine. But now.

Now fear chokes him, surrounding his throat thick and cloying and the only thing that comes out his mouth is:

“I’m trying, mum. Mother.” Damian sniffs. The sound of his mother’s voice always turned him from the grandson of the demon’s head, the son of batman, into a child. 

She is his _mother_ though. Grayson has no right to do the same. He cannot be allowed to hold that over him.

Grayson is trying to fit into shoes that don’t belong to him. And it should be funny, thinking of Grayson trying to squeeze himself into his mother’s wardrobe, but instead the image just makes him furious.

He scratches at his sheets, and whispers _“I am Batman’s heir. You have no authority over me.”_

***

Once, he’d come across a book in a woman’s room in the League. It had been half-hidden beneath a scarf. When he kicked the scarf away, he’d seen Arabic letters on the books’ front. He’d assumed it was a Quran. 

Arabic was his Grandfather and Mother’s language, his Grandfather was the greatest authority in the League.

The woman was a heretic twice over, and Damian put a knife through it.

The woman had watched him. The assassin was stiff with fear.

Damian wrenched his eyes from the book, to the woman’s brown eyes. “This is foolishness,” Damian said.

“I—” the woman gasped. “Sorry, I’m sorry my lord—”

“ _Sorry?”_ Damian snarled. “You have disobeyed my Grandfather! For that you will serve as a _warning!”_

The woman’s face did not change as she spoke. He should have reached for his sword then, but her expression sent his thoughts down a different track: couldn’t she understand him?

“Do you even understand me?” he asked, his voice coming low and fast, keeping the question out of his tone.

“It’s not the book!” the woman gasped — _more Arabic_. From her, an underling, it was presumptuous indeed. She was testing Damian’s patience badly. “ They’re letters from--”

She cut herself off, looking terrified.

Damian pulled his sword out of the book and flipped it open. The woman was correct. It was a clever box, filled to the brim with letters. Damian’s eyes scanned right-to-left over them.

Damian’s written Arabic was very, very poor. His eyes caught on a word that looked familiar from somewhere. He sounded out the letters—

“Mum,” he said. And then the meaning of the word hit him.

 _Mum_.

(This word had made Mother look _weak._ )

“Don’t take them from me!”

“I’d never—,” Damian began, staring into eyes the wrong shape, hair the wrong length, and fled.

Outside the room, heart pounding, the truth registered. His underling had ordered him away and he had left.

“It hurt,” he croaked. The words came out so _pathetically_. He was the heir. She couldn’t do this to him. He slammed the door with his fist.

He pushed open the door.

“Destroy those letters,” he snarled, and watched them burn.

***

Damian knowns Grayson is still learning Arabic. He hasn’t caught him red-handed since the incident in Grayson’s kitchen/dining room, but sometimes Grayson will look at him and speak with an odd lilt to his vowels that gives him away.

“You’re still learning,” Damian says, when the sound is just a hair too familiar.

“I’m doing what?” Grayson feigns ignorance.

“Studying that stupid language.”

Grayson shrugs. “I can learn what I like, Damian. You don’t get a say in that.”

“You’d never be able to speak properly anyway,” Damian hissed. “You’ll never learn!”

“I can.” Grayson says.

Grayson is as stubborn as a brick wall, and much better at dodging punches. 

***

One night, on patrol, Nightwing and Robin come across a kid hiding in a bush. He’s nestled himself in deep away from the wind and the cold. Nightwing, of course, jumps up beside him and the kid hunches further into his own knees, like that will stop him from being seen.

Nightwing is assuming the worst, Damian can tell. His brother’s mind is conjuring up images of an abused child. But Damian sees a sad kid, not a scared one.

He crosses his arms in contempt and watches as Nightwing tries to communicate with the kid.

Nightwing manages to determine the kid _can’t_ communicate in English, which is just great. Damian really, really hopes he speaks hindi or something. Anything not Arabic would be nice, really.

Nightwing begins to get frustrated. Robin sits himself in a tree and watches. Nightwing’s trying to get the kid’s phone number. The comms can connect to the mobile network if required, but he can’t seem to get the number out of the kid. He mimes a phone at his ear using his thumb and forefinger like bygone relic he is, then switches it up to mime a smartphone when he realises the kid’s probably never seen one in his life.

It’s all pretty unsuccessful, and a little bit amusing. And then Nightwing manages to pull a breathy phrase out of the kid. The quiet syllables resolve themselves in Damian’s mind.

“Where am I?”

Fuck. It’s Arabic — of course it’s Arabic. Damian very nearly curses, and leaps for the branch above him to delay the inevitable.

“Robin!” Nightwing calls up plaintively.

“Even your meager skills should suffice here, Nightwing.”

“Aw c’mon, give me a hand! There’s nothing scary about him! He’s adorable!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Damian only just cuts off the insistence that he’s _not_ afraid. He isn’t — he’s fighting to keep the strangled, cold feeling out of his throat, but he’s certainly not afraid. To prove it (because being afraid of a _language_ is the sort of idea that is likely to _stick_ if it enters Nightwing’s head) he drops out of the tree and waves Nighwing away.

“May I have your phone number?” he asks, and then tries to clarify. “I would call your mother, if you wish it.”

The clarification comes stumbling out of his mouth before he can stop it, and he freezes, suddenly afraid that Nightwing has suddenly become fluent enough to notice the nervous, _weak_ phrasing. His brother is always pushing him into everything, if he learned just how weak Damian could be in his mother tongue…

He would never get to control a moment of his life. Dick would never listen. He barely listened when Damian commanded him. He’s waiting for him to pounce.

Dick remains silent, and Damian thanks his brother’s incompetence. For now, he is safe.

The kid knows his phone number. He rattles it off, and Damian taps it against his comm. He hears a dial tone, and then a panicked, scared voice answers. It’s a man’s voice.

“Who is this?”

_This is not his Grandfather._

It's not -- but his lips move before his brain can gag his tongue.

“Damian. Hello. Thank you for taking my—”

“Who are you!? Is Aaron with you? Is he safe? Let me speak to him!”

“Of course.”

Damian scoops the comm from the folds of his ear, and offers it to the boy — Aaron. “It enables you to speak, like a phone,” he says. The child is clumsy with his attempt to install it, and it is too large for him and definitely the wrong shape, but it will do.

The child’s face lights up.

“I’m okay! Nightwing and Robin found me!”

Damian spares a glance at Nightwing — and he’s beaming proudly at him.

The man who is probably the child’s father comes to collect him. He speaks to Aaron constantly as he drives to the park, and the sadness goes out of the boy. They walk to the edge of the park and wait until a white sedan pulls to a halt in front of them and a woman leaps out and pulls him into her arms.

Nightwing’s smiling, the sap.

“Good job, Robin,” he says, and Damian has to duck a hair-ruffle.

***

He didn’t do a good job. He did terribly. _He’d given his real name_. This is no longer a weakness that he can afford.

“I’m Robin. I’m Robin. I’m Robin.”

Damian mouthes the words to himself on the ride back to the manor. He doesn’t let his mouth open. He lets his tongue move in his mouth.

Grayson can’t know.

He leaps to put away the costume before Grayson can get a good question off. Father isn’t home yet. Grayson has questions, but Damian isn’t about to provide any answers.

Not in any language.

He slams his door shut, and whispers the words that the son of Batman should have spoken.

“Give me your number. I will call your guardians. I am Robin. Aaron is safe, he is with me. I will allow you to speak with him.”

The words come slow. They’re hard to say. It’s like each word brings his Grandfather’s disapproving gaze down on him. It turns his stomach to knots.

But he screwed up.

There’s a knock on the door. Since he’s leaning on the door, it goes straight up Damian’s spine.

“Go away!”

“Damian? Little brother?”

“Don’t you _dare_ , Grayson! You are too stupid!”

He isn’t going to turn into that powerless little kid that Grayson keeps trying to turn him into. He _isn’t_.

He is Damian Wayne.

The door handle twists down, and Damian grabs it before it can lower any further. He pushes it up and locks the door.

“Dami?”

Grayson needs to get a clue.

Damian retreats back to the bed. He’s safe now.

He whispers the words he should have said on the comms. The words that are assertive. The words that aren’t spoken by a child.

***

  


Dick leaves Damian to it. He… well, he gets it. Sometimes things slip out in ways you don’t expect when you’re thrust into a new scenario.

He leaves Damian to it for half an hour, and then he opens Damian’s door.

Damian is lying on his bed, on his stomach, facing the opposite wall.

“Damian? I wanted to talk to you.”

Damian doesn’t respond, but he’s definitely awake. He sits on the edge of the bed, and tries to find the words for what he wants to say.

“I… grew up with two languages.”

His voice goes thick, and he has to pause, thinking about his parents’ words and the meaning that they had — and how he can’t remember the sounds that accompanied them any more.

“I’ve lost most of my parents’ language. I know… I have a few words. I know how to say the most important stuff.”

His eyes are hot and wet. “I don’t want that to be you.”

He breathes in — the air is cold against his too-hot, too-tight throat.

“Nothing I have to say in Arabic is worth hearing, Grayson.”

That’s—not true. “Everything you have to say is worth hearing.”

“If that were true, you would stop this stupidity at my command. _”_

While Dick is trying to think up the best response to that, Damian lets out a small howl and kicks at the bed. “I want it _gone_. I am not that stupid child! If that part of me is lost I will be thankful!”

A wounded noise escapes Dick.

“You were able to help that kid. It’s… just look at it as a tool?”

***

“It—”

  
Damian breaks off. Mercifully, Grayson doesn’t interrupt.

 _It treats me like a tool_ , Damian thinks, and curses to himself. It’s not true. The language is just that — a language. It’s the tool, not him.

And if Grandfather used it when he treated him like a tool? He couldn’t let the memory of that man control him.

He still had time to learn to speak properly. Grayson wasn’t anywhere near fluent yet.

“So long as it is not a tool for socialization.”


End file.
